


Drive My Car

by Savageandwise



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, M/M, McLennon, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Sorry about Shea Stadium, Work of fiction, not my take on reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise
Summary: John realises he's in love for the first time.





	Drive My Car

**Author's Note:**

> This was an anonymous prompt i recieved on tumblr. I'm moving most of them on here! Enjoy!

“Oh fuck off!” Paul said. He pushed past George and left the studio, slamming the door behind him.

“Well,” John said after an awkward beat. “That’s settled then.” 

Behind them Ringo laughed nervously. 

“Do you want me to go get him? He’ll see reason eventually,” George asked.

“Fuck him. No. It’s perfect the way it is. And anyway. He can’t understand it like we can, can he? Let’s do that bit again. The one with ‘when I was a boy…’”

There was a nagging feeling in the back of John’s mind like something caught between your teeth. After leaving the studio he didn’t go home at once. He sat in the car in front of the building, smoking one cigarette after the other. It wasn’t as though they’d never had a fight before. They argued all the time. In fact their arguments often spurred them on to greater things. Not to mention the heights to which arguing pushed them, physically.

After a barney there was a kind of electricity between them, high voltage, and one touch… one touch from Paul, one look would get him off harder and faster than anything else in the world.

His stomach was churning. Not like the fluttering of idiomatic butterflies but the flapping of something far more unsavoury. Pigeons. Bats. He felt like vomiting. 

He kept seeing Paul’s face before him: colour staining his cheeks, his lip curled in anger. That irritating tone he got. A sort of fake posh elocution that drove John up the wall and made him want to punch Paul’s stupid face. His stupid, beautiful face. He was so angry at him for walking out on him he was ill. Paul had made him ill. 

John felt a pressure on his sinuses, his eyes stung. They hadn’t ever argued to the point where Paul left the studio like that. What if he never returned? 

His heart began to beat so fast he felt dizzy. He rolled the window down further and tossed his cigarette out. He couldn’t breathe. What if it was a heart attack? Surely he was too young for a heart attack?

After everything they had been through: angry mobs in Manila, malfunctioning aeroplanes, rainstorms in Australia – he’d survived it all – how was this somehow worse?

All at once he caught sight of a figure striding towards his car. He recognised him at once though he wasn’t certain how, he could barely make out the shape of the man without his glasses.

Paul walked right up to the car and wrenched open the driver’s door. “Get out.  Go home or whatever you do. I’ll do it meself!” Paul said unceremoniously. Then he opened the passenger’s door and got in beside John.

It hit him like an arrow between the eyes: he was in love with Paul.

He would have laughed if he hadn’t been so horrified. At first he thought to himself: it can’t be. It’s too ridiculous. It can’t be.

Paul turned to face him, his knees bumping John’s in a confrontational manner. John wondered why the man had to take up so much space. Did he have to touch him all the bloody time?

“What the hell are you playing at?” Paul exploded, shoving a finger in John’s face angrily. 

“Me? What am I playing at? You stormed out like a tart with her knickers in a twist!” John shouted.

It was like a second nature to him, arguing was, so much so that he couldn’t force himself to be polite even in light of his newly discovered feelings. 

“Like a… how dare you!” Paul reached over and grabbed John by the shoulders.

“That’s right, Princess. Like a strumpet who just received it up the wrong hole unexpectedly.”

Paul drew back to strike John across the face and he caught his wrist just in time. He smirked at him. 

This was foreplay John realised. And it terrified him because though they had fucked countless times, that was before. Before John knew: he was in love with Paul.

He released Paul’s wrist and leaned back against the door of the car, leaving a large gap between them.

“I thought you’d left,” he said seriously.

“I did leave.”

“But you came back.”

“You acted like I was just some… like a dumb straight who wouldn’t know a good song if it hit him square in the… I thought we were a team,” Paul finished awkwardly. 

“We are a team,” John murmured.

He could see the muscles twitching in Paul’s face, the glassy cast to his eyes. He wondered if he was going to cry. All at once he regretted being so cruel to him, regretted laughing at his refusal to drop acid, at the prissy way he fussed over his basslines. John wondered if he had been so cruel because somewhere deep inside he’d always known his true feelings. And he’d always known that it was one thing to suck your mate off in the loo at Shea Stadium, quite another to profess your love to him.

“We are a team, Paul. It just… I just did one with George what’s wrong with that?” he said gently.

Paul just shrugged. “You made me feel like… it made me feel redundant.”

And that was a laugh because John often felt like that with Paul. Like he was talentless, struggling to piece together a song over a period of weeks only to have Paul breeze in and announce he’d fucking written their next hit in his fucking sleep. 

“You’re the one who just left. You just left me… what was I supposed to think? Maybe I’m the one who… maybe I’m redundant. You don’t even need me anymore. Not like in the beginning.”

Paul was looking at him in astonishment as though he were speaking a foreign language. “How could you think that? How could I ever stop needing you?”

John sucked in his breath and looked away. Of course he meant the music. Perhaps he even meant the physical aspect. But there was no way… no way…

“I’m furious at you, John,” Paul said quietly.

“I know.”

“Come on, come closer. You’re sitting so far away.”

He let Paul grab hold of his lapel. They both looked up automatically, scanning the street for passing cars and pedestrians. Then they slid closer together, their faces tantalisingly near but not touching, their lips centimetres apart. John held his breath. He’d never kissed Paul like this before. Knowing what he knew now. 

Paul slipped his hand over John’s thigh slowly. 

“What is it about quarrelling?” he whispered.

“What is it?” John asked.

“I would have my way with you right here, if it weren’t for the fact that anyone might catch us at it,” Paul said.

John kissed him then, it felt like kissing Paul and different at the same time. It felt wrong in all the right ways.

“Fuck, lad,” John gasped. “You had better drive me home then. Before you make a mess in me car.”


End file.
